


Caught

by spaztronaut



Category: The Host - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-12
Updated: 2018-08-12
Packaged: 2019-06-26 04:12:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15655518
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spaztronaut/pseuds/spaztronaut
Summary: A longer version of what happened when Melanie was captured by the Seekers. Mel's POV.





	Caught

**Author's Note:**

> This is a one-shot I'm moving over from FF.net. Hope you enjoy!

Where could she be?

I have no idea. This was their neighborhood before the invasion. This is the only abandoned building left. This is where she should be. But I've searched. Every room on every floor.

I can't find her!

I start to panic. I can feel it, in my chest. In my stomach. Aching, like an empty hole.

There's no one left. Not my mother, she was the first to go. Then my father, he was next. None of my friends survived. Only me and Jamie. Just the two of us. And I thought it would always only be the two of us.

But then I met Jared. And suddenly, things weren't so bad anymore. Jamie and I didn't go hungry for days at a time while I searched for a safe place to steal food. We were safer, and happier. And then I saw Sharon on that TV. It was her, I was sure.

My cousin was alive.

We had left for Chicago immediately after that. It took us a while to get here, switching cars and scoping things out. Didn't need the parasites catching wind of us.

And now I'm here, in this place she must have been, only I can't find her! She's not dead. She couldn't have been captured in the time it took to get here. I know my cousin and my cousin wouldn't get caught like that. Not after surviving this long.

I feel like I'm so close, but I'm still so far away. She was here, in Chicago. But how do you find someone who is trying not to be found?

I push the aching feeling aside. I just have to keep looking, is all. I won't give up. I won't leave this city if she's still out there.

I turn down another hallway. I've already searched this one, I think. But I check again anyway. Not for Sharon, but for a sign. Any sign that she's been here. Any sign that anyone's been here.

I'm just turning into the first door on the left when I hear them.

Seekers. They're downstairs. Someone must have seen me sneaking in.

The parasites would never enter an abandoned building. Not when it's so clearly marked as being dangerous. No, they follow the rules. Just not the ones that count. The ones about murder or stealing people's bodies to use as transportation. Those rules they feel they are allowed to break.

I know I'm trapped. I can't make it out now. The only exit is on the first floor. The building's fire escape is lying, collapsed, outside in the alleyway. I noticed it when I was scoping the place out. Even if I managed to get back down to the second floor before the Seeker's did, it's too high to jump.

I'm caught. The best I can do now is make sure I say goodbye.

I find the stairwell, it's dark and cold and I hear my feet echoing as I take the stairs two at a time. I can also hear the Seeker's below me. Their shouts as they realize where I am. They must have been searching the first floor, but now they're headed directly for me.

I whip around the landing of the stairs and push through the steel door leading to the fifth floor. That was the deal. If anything happened, if I wasn't able to meet up with Jared again, I'd leave a note. Let them know what happened, where I was.

Only I won't be anywhere when they get this note.

My feet pound on the moldy green carpeting that covers the fifth hallway. I count the doors as I go by.

Two, three, four. Five.

I pull a small pencil from my pocket. It's broken in half, now it's the size of one of those little pencils that they give you when you play miniature golf. The ones you use to keep score.

For a brief second I wonder if the aliens still use them when they play miniature golf. Do they still golf? I shake my head and pick up a small scrap of plaster off the ground. It's a stupid question and I don't have the time to think about it.

Quickly, in a scratchy hand that I know is barely legible because my hands are shaking from the cold—or at least that's the only explanation I'm willing to accept—I scrawl a few lines for Jared. He'll see them when he comes looking for me. When I don't come back.

I throw the white plaster piece on the floor, careful that it doesn't shatter, but not careful enough that anyone will think it out of place, should they look. Besides Jared that is, but he knows where to look.

I hear the Seeker's on the stairs. I turn and run, and when I hear the sound of the steel door being slammed into the wall, I know I don't have long. They're right behind me now. I can hear them shouting.

It's so cold in here. This might not be bad if it wasn't so cold. If I have to die, why not have it be in the spring? In sixty degree weather. Why now, in the dead of winter, in Chicago? All alone in an abandoned apartment building? Men chasing me, men who look like men, but aren't. Aliens.

I round a corner, so fast that I slam into the flaking white wall across the hall. I bounce off of it, refusing to slow down. I have no escape plan, but I won't be caught either. I keep running.

It's dark now. There are no windows here, in the heart of the condemned apartment building. I can't see anymore. I can't see where I'm going, but it's better than what's behind me.

The Seeker's are shouting for me to stop. Their flashlights beaming all around me. Flashes of light streak the walls, then the floor, then the ceiling, then the floor again. They're running, lights flailing around in their hands. But they can still see me. Hear my heavy breathing, my hard footsteps reverberating in the dark.

I turn another corner. This time, at least, I don't smash into any walls, but just barely. I'm in a long straight hall now. The lights aren't finding purchase on any walls ahead, so I know I'm not headed down a dead end. Or at least, it's not dead-ending yet. I don't know what I'll do if that happens.

I'm freezing, my toes are numb, even with the exertion. I push harder.

The Seeker's are screaming at me. Shouting lies to get me to slow down. To trick me into stopping. "It's fine," they shout.

"Be careful!"

"Don't hurt yourself!"

Like they care. They don't care about me. They're trying to kill me! Steal my body from me. I feel sick. For a second I'm afraid I might really throw up, but I keep running anyway.

"Please!" one shouts. "There is danger ahead!"

_The danger is behind!_  I scream at them in my head. I'm running so hard I don't think I could say it out loud even if I had wanted to. I don't know where I am, but when I look ahead I understand what they were shouting about.

The building's elevator. Not the elevator itself, that sits open and empty on the top floor. But the elevator doors are open here, revealing the dark emptiness of the shaft. I can see it, just barely. There's light coming from somewhere—one of the open apartment doors, probably. Orange light from a streetlamp shining through a window.

The Seekers are so close now, but they can't stop me. I almost laugh as they continue their pleas in vain. I'm running fast and hard when I reach the edge of the floor, where grungy green carpet meets open air. Black space.

I fall. That's what happens when you're plummeting down an elevator shaft. You fall and you hit the bottom and you die. But you don't become an evil bodysnatching alien lookalike who will not hesitate to kill everyone you love. Everyone you have left in the world.

I'm satisfied with this ending. With this death. At least it's on my terms. I beat them. I didn't let the Seeker's take me. I didn't betray Jamie and Jared that way. I feel bad leaving them, but it's better this way. Better to leave like this, than to come back as a parasite.

I notice the cold again. The air rushes past me, giving the illusion of being colder. Instinct causes my arms and legs to flail. Looking for something to grip. Something that will save me from the horrible splat that I know is coming. But I don't want to be saved from it.

I hear myself hit the ground. It's loud, louder than I would have ever thought, if I'd ever thought about something like that before. I must have fallen all the way to the basement, I know. It felt like forever when I was falling, but now that I've stopped, I know what forever really feels like.

It started with a thud, loud, but painless. It's not painless anymore.

It hurts! It's hurts so badly that I know I'm alive. Not dead like I'd wanted, like I'd hoped.

_Not high enough._

I must have broken everything. I can't think coherently enough to try to think of what could hurt so badly. My legs, my arms, my back, my chest, my head. When will it stop? I just want it to stop.

I can't see. I'm not sure if my eyes are open or not. But I know when the darkness finally surrounds me. I know when when I it covers me like a blanket. I don't dare hope that I'm dying, though. It hurts too much for me to be dying.

Then everything is gone. The pain, the cold, the shouts from above that, somehow in the back of my mind, I was still registering. The only thing left is his face.

Jared.

His perfect face. Hard and strong, just like his personality. His brown hair, bleached lighter from the sun. The way his brown eyes crinkled when he smiled at something Jamie said, or when we were alone and it was just him and me while Jamie was asleep.

He was so beautiful and perfect and he would take care of Jamie. He would protect him and keep him alive. They would be okay. Jared would find my note and then they'd leave. They'd find someplace safe and my body would never find them. This is all I could give them now. All I will ever be able to do for them. The Seeker's are going to take me. Hopefully, I will die. But if not, my body will never find them. That is all I can hope for.


End file.
